The spiralling cost of living has been an increasingly urgent problem in the UK. But for many people, huge rises in energy bills are about to turn a difficult situation into an impossible one.
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, are sanctions on Russia working? Plus, Joe Biden’s sweeping debt-forgiveness plan (10:00) and in defence of commuting (15:10).
Six months of hell in Ukraine. Plus: recession stalks Europe.
The troop buildups, the belligerent speeches, the excruciatingly staged Kremlin policy meetings … for months, the signs had been there in plain sight. Nonetheless, the order in the early hours of 24 February from Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine came as a lightning bolt, one that would change Europe for years to come.
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, will Donald Trump run again? Also, the future of the Visa-Mastercard payments duopoly (9:35) and, what kind of prime minister will Britain get? (21:45).
The artist discusses the enduring allure of the “Mona Lisa,” the puzzle of celebrity, and which famous people she would invite to dinner.
By Françoise Mouly, Art by Anita Kunz
How social media, FaceTune, and plastic surgery created a single, cyborgian look.
By Nat Hentoff
As he approaches 90, even brushes with death can’t keep him off the road — or dim a late-life creative burst.
Welcome to the era of the audio meme, a time when replicable units of sound are a cultural currency as strong as — if not stronger than — images and text.
Read more: https://nyti.ms/3A6vPOT
Polishing the crystal ball
The intelligence community often fails to make accurate predictions. Amy Zegart, an expert brought in to improve analysis in the United States, sets out what can be done to overcome our cognitive biases.
Improving analysis to prevent nuclear catastrophe isn’t just a matter of history. Great power competition is back. Russia and China are trying to rewrite the international order along authoritarian lines.
Joe Biden’s political capital is riding high after a key plank of his legislative programme came to fruition. But the US president has greeted this “hot streak” in his usual quiet fashion. For his predecessor, it was a decidedly rough week after his home was raided by the FBI, looking for official documents that Donald Trump had held on to after his presidential term had ended. The reaction was a typical explosion of rage and accusation. David Smith, our Washington bureau chief, follows this compare-and-contrast theme to see which of the two men, who at this juncture still look likely to face each other again in the 2024 presidential election, came out on top.
Boomers Daily 